The Leadership of Congress: By George Rothwell Brown

The Leadership of Congress: By George Rothwell Brown

Excerpt

The transition period in the history of the government of the United States, which began with McKinley's Buffalo speech heralding a new era and ended with the reaction following the World War, was characterized by a psychological revolt against the coercive pressure of the party system upon minds liberalized by a new conception of political morality.

Institutions as old as the republic itself were swept away and fundamental structures of the state were altered or destroyed. Indirectly the relationship of Congress to the Executive was changed as well as that of the Senate to the House.

The influences which in this period arrested and checked those tendencies in government which for a century and a quarter had given form to its organism were the freeing of the elective processes through the introduction of the direct primary system, the enfranchisement of women, the challenge to party absolutism by the progressive movement, the direct election of United States Senators, and the utter annihilation of the power of the speakership of the House of Representatives.